Alien

My movie forever.  One day, I’m going to write a long essay about Alien. The film incorporates so many ideas, and when you remember that it was made in the 1970s, it’s even more astonishing. Some ideas were clearly intentional, others less so, but they all come together perfectly to reflect the world we’re living in.  Alien is far more radical than it initially seems, or even than it was intended to be. It was ahead of its time, and I don’t care what anyone says: it’s a fucking masterpiece. The way this movie blends real-world ideas with sci-fi and horror is beautiful. It makes a huge statement about the powerful, wealthier groups who would discard us in a heartbeat to climb the next rung of the ladder. One of the film’s metaphors is the greedy, capitalist society we live in. This suggests a dystopian future where the socioeconomic issues of the 20th century have yet to be resolved… and oh boy, they were right.  However, the film’s most fascinating commentary on capitalism might lie in the creature itself. The alien is sleek and beautiful, yet deadly and unstoppable. It serves as a clear allegory for the capitalist system: both predatory, relentless, ever-evolving, and adaptable… devouring everything in its path. Even the horrifying use of humans as disposable hosts for alien offspring echoes how capitalism exploits people, always using us as tools in its insatiable pursuit of profit. Another topic is sexual violence. As stated by Dan O’Bannon himself, the writer of this masterpiece: “[The alien] uses its victims as a host. It rapes them. Then they give birth. This is what makes it so disturbing.” And as film critic Mark Kermode stated: “O’Bannon argues that it also functions as a metaphorical dramatization of the male fear of penetration. He says that the oral invasion of Hurt’s character was ‘payback’ for all those horror films in which sexually vulnerable women were terrorized by rampaging male monsters.”